I wrote this last August and it's still very relevant.

Lately, due to the GOP picking Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, I’ve been seeing articles and think-pieces on poor whites and their voting habits. The pieces invariably take the tone that whites are voting against their own self-interests by voting for Republicans and that they need understanding and kindness to help them out of this dilemma. The problem with these articles is that they don’t realize (or want to realize) that poor whites have competing interests – one for being poor, and the other for being white.

Historians and social scientists are still trying to figure out exactly when “white people” officially became a thing. Many trace it to the colonial period in America when laws were first enacted that gave whites less severe punishments for the same crimes that blacks had committed. Some ask if it hadn’t started earlier; after all, something made them choose Africa as a supply depot for slaves. Whichever it is, there is no doubt that whites have been advantaged over blacks for the entirety of American history.

Despite working class whites lack of economic success, many still vote for Republicans and have since the Southern Strategy peeled whites away from Democrats over that party’s support for Civil Rights in the 1960’s.